The Year of the Body: Week 16

in which we take the first sip of the Bottle Labeled Drink Me...and notice something

Friends, soul writers, mystics, and lovers of prayer,

Welcome to a new lunar year with the rather startling Chandra: A bottle labeled drink me

The force of events sweeps away who we thought we were and plunges us to a deeper place beyond the known. The sheer immediacy, the sudden clarity shifts mountains of intent into a different octave altogether. Being taken by storm is the most direct path from here to there. And when cosmic worlds are urgently coming through, the only smart thing is to step aside and make a huge amount of room for unexpected guests, at event you could never have arranged in your wildest dreams. (Inside Degrees)

Last Sunday ushered in 3 new beginnings:

• new Lunar Year with a strange mystical potent
• new lunar cycle with a seed to nourish
• new novena (I start a new one every other lunar cycle)

This magical lunar year opened last Sunday with a Moon Tea with April McMurtry. She invited us to consider how our relationship with the moon affects our relationship with time.

What is time?

April offered an evocative definition I’ve been pondering ever since:

Time is a repetition of rhythm.

To help us see how peoples across cultures and continents measured and depicted the rhythm of time, she showed us a series of calendars. Every one of them was circular. And beautiful.

She ended with a black and white image of the month of April in a modern calendar. The stark squareness of it startled us. Suddenly the calendar we've used our entire lives felt like a prison. Little boxes all in a row. It felt tight, controlling, constricting.

April didn’t have to say a word. Our bodies knew that time is a circular rhythm, not a square.

That led to a discussion of our experience of time. As we talked, I realized my relationship with time changed dramatically during quarantine.

Without planning it or even realizing it, I had followed the wisdom of my body—and she knew it was time for a new rhythm. 

As I listened to my body, I found myself sleeping later in the morning. Then spending more time anointing. Anointing expanded dramatically last year as I added My Mystic Family call and Cast a Circle. Doing those two things amplified the power of my full-body anointing.

My biggest shift came when I began to spend more time in my sacred reading and writing chair. One morning in the first week of quarantine, I looked over at the clock and started to get up to get to the computer.

I felt my body say stop, sit a little longer. Read a bit more.

In the past, I would have shrugged that feeling off and told myself I had too much to do. But I listened. I stayed another hour and read something that turned out to be exactly what I needed for my current project.

And just like that, I fell into a new daily rhythm of soul writing and soul reading for two hours, sometimes more.

My new normal is to get to “work” around 2 in the afternoon and work for 3 hours until my body tells me it’s time to walk a rosary.

As I lived this new rhythm of time, a strange thing happened. I worked less yet created more.

I felt less pressure about what I was creating or if people would come. I simply said yes to the sacred ideas that came to me in my chair and somehow they were just the right ideas at just the right time.

One of those ideas was to create Mother Moon Yoga last September.

A pretty wild idea for a woman who knows little about yoga. But I said yes, gathered magnificent yoginis from multiple traditions, gave Emma a platform to take us deeper into the mystical meaning of each moon and how it speaks to our personal natal charts, tossed in some deep soul writing and ancient prayers, and offered it to you.

And you liked it. A lot.

We’ve been gathering on the eve of the Dark Moon and the Full Moon ever since, opening to the evocative rhythm and mystical teachings of the moon.

The next four-month section opens in May, but I don’t want you to miss the magic of the eve of the first Full Moon of this lunar year on Friday, April 24.

Register before Friday and you’ll get April for free.

Watch the new video Emma and I made for this magical experience of entering into rhythm with our mother, the moon.

And for those who've asked me in the past about making payments, PayPal just updated my website with a Pay Later option over 4 months.

Mother Moon Yoga May-August 2021 

At the end of last year, I laughed when I saw I’d not only worked less and created more, I'd earned more, too.

I like this new rhythm of time. I like it a lot. I’m not going back.

So I feel ready to embrace whatever mysteries this new lunar year has in store. And it’s clear from her mysterious Chandra—a bottle labeled drink me—that thinking and planning are not in charge.

This is definitely a sacred call to step into a new rhythm with magic and mystery and let the mystery carry us where she wants us to go.

Now, about that gift….

On the 3rd day of the Dark Moon, we receive a gift, a seed, that we nurture for the lunar cycle, but in this special first cycle, that's a seed to nourish for a full year.

With excitement, I settled into my sacred chair and waited. And the seed revealed herself.

My seed is, of course, mine, but I want to share it in the hopes my story inspires you to open to your seed.

I reread that Chandra. And pondered April’s question about time. And began to connect the dots between that wild bottle and my new rhythm of time.

I wrote: my mystic witch time. Oh I like that! My new rhythm of time is mystic witch time.

But what happened next was a bit surprising, suddenly a long list of things poured onto the page:

my mystic witch time
my mystic witch purpose
my mystic witch altar
my mystic witch event with Jeanne d'Arc
my mystic witch guardian (that would be Jeanne)
my mystic witch title (I'm changing my site)
my mystic witch amulet (being designed)
my mystic witch communities
my mystic witch life

Duh! THAT’S what’s in my bottle labeled drink me! It’s My Mystic Witch Life.

And the elixir inside…well, I think it’s water from the river of prayer, but I’ll just have to keep sipping it and see.

So, reread that Chandra… look at the bottle… and ponder questions like these in prayer and soul writing:

• what is my relationship with time?
• do I long for a new rhythm of time?
• what does my body know about the real nature of time?
• am I willing to be swept away?
• what’s written in invisible ink on the label of my bottle?
• am I ready to take a sip?

Do I know what will happen now that I've cracked that bottle? Of course not. But I trust I am being held and loved and guided and I’ll land somewhere safe and holy. Somewhere completely unexpected, just like the Chandra says.

To support me as I take my first steps in this new year, I’m going to go on a rosary walk holding the sacred petition to live My Mystic Witch Life! It's my 10th novena since I first picked up a Goddess Rosary and I sense it's perfect.

to listening to the wisdom of our bodies on how to live in a loving relationship with time...and seeing what happens

Janet

PS: Please NOTE: this is your only invitation to join Mother Moon Yoga. I hope you take it. If you want to find a new rhythm of time, let the Moon teach you.